Will of God 2 HS

Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

Review-

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Stage 1: The Renewed mind and The BibleGod explains as much of his will as we will know in the BibleNot in a Crystal ball, not in tarot cards, not in seance— only in the BibleSince he hasn’t given us ways to make little decisions that means that he doesn’t want us to know exactly what will happen. He could have given us a magic 8-ball but, he didn’t. But, the Bible without the renewed mind won’t be of much help. People use the Bible all sorts of wrong ways because their minds have not been renewed by the Holy SpiritThe Bible will be used to equip us for “every good work”. Not just some of the good works. But ALL of them. That means if God’s will is for us to do good works, then we need to be saturated in the word with a renewed mind.Stage 2: The Renewed Mind and the Bible and DecisionsYou won’t have a crystal ball, but you have good works. Ok, but now you still need to make decisions. How is that going to happen?What will happen naturally is that as you seek an answer your renewed mind will be moved by what it has seen in Scripture and has felt through growth in the Holy Spirit and it will begin to feel out the path that is most like the mind of Christ.The “Spirit of the mind” begins to act like the Holy Spirit as it is shaped and grown and the Holy Spirit.This is very different than hearing voices or waiting for lightning to strike.The more you know who God is, the more you will know what pleases him and what he hates. The more you know God the more you will know how to act and what to decide. Compare: laboring in study, prayer, wisdom seeking for a renewed mind to apply God’s word to your life and asking God for a direct revelation. Stage 3: The Renewed Life and everything elseI think you would be surprised at how much of your life decisions are about:maybe .01% is big life decisionsmaybe 4.9% is regular other decisionsleaving close to 95% of your life to happen without decisionsHundreds and hundreds of acts a day that you don’t even considerAlmost all of your attitudesalmost all of your facial expressions and body positioningThis means that almost everything you do— another way to phrase that is, almost all of your opportunities to follow the will of command of God you do or don’t do without thinking. They spill out. They just happen. They are just there. They are who you are naturally. what you believe naturally. what happens by itself.Jesus in Matt 12:34-36 For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. 35 A good person produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil person produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. 36 I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speakSo, don’t be angry, don’t be upset, don’t be jealous, don’t be anxious. Those are commands we break and we don’t even think about them. The Renewed mind is a change. It is new. It is the work of God in us. It is a huge, different change. In order for the spill over to be good it has to be a good tree. you can’t make it good. Only God can renew your mind. Only God can make you new.

- Stage 1: The Renewed mind and The BibleGod explains as much of his will as we will know in the BibleNot in a Crystal ball, not in tarot cards, not in seance— only in the BibleSince he hasn’t given us ways to make little decisions that means that he doesn’t want us to know exactly what will happen. He could have given us a magic 8-ball but, he didn’t. But, the Bible without the renewed mind won’t be of much help. People use the Bible all sorts of wrong ways because their minds have not been renewed by the Holy SpiritThe Bible will be used to equip us for “every good work”. Not just some of the good works. But ALL of them. That means if God’s will is for us to do good works, then we need to be saturated in the word with a renewed mind.Stage 2: The Renewed Mind and the Bible and DecisionsYou won’t have a crystal ball, but you have good works. Ok, but now you still need to make decisions. How is that going to happen?What will happen naturally is that as you seek an answer your renewed mind will be moved by what it has seen in Scripture and has felt through growth in the Holy Spirit and it will begin to feel out the path that is most like the mind of Christ.The “Spirit of the mind” begins to act like the Holy Spirit as it is shaped and grown and the Holy Spirit.This is very different than hearing voices or waiting for lightning to strike.The more you know who God is, the more you will know what pleases him and what he hates. The more you know God the more you will know how to act and what to decide. Compare: laboring in study, prayer, wisdom seeking for a renewed mind to apply God’s word to your life and asking God for a direct revelation. Stage 3: The Renewed Life and everything elseI think you would be surprised at how much of your life decisions are about:maybe .01% is big life decisionsmaybe 4.9% is regular other decisionsleaving close to 95% of your life to happen without decisionsHundreds and hundreds of acts a day that you don’t even considerAlmost all of your attitudesalmost all of your facial expressions and body positioningThis means that almost everything you do— another way to phrase that is, almost all of your opportunities to follow the will of command of God you do or don’t do without thinking. They spill out. They just happen. They are just there. They are who you are naturally. what you believe naturally. what happens by itself.Jesus in For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. 35 A good person produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil person produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. 36 I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speakSo, don’t be angry, don’t be upset, don’t be jealous, don’t be anxious. Those are commands we break and we don’t even think about them. The Renewed mind is a change. It is new. It is the work of God in us. It is a huge, different change. In order for the spill over to be good it has to be a good tree. you can’t make it good. Only God can renew your mind. Only God can make you new.

Christian Standard Bible. (2017). (). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.

2 wills. This is the command will (Statute will not Sovereign will).

We will live everything sacrificially, trusting in him.

We can trust because He is in control. He promises to use, and love us through anything.

Moving forward-

Verse 2 ends with us knowing God’s will in our life.

How does he get us there

We discern it. Through our mind. Which isn’t like this world. Which is transformed. By “being renewed”.

The answer to what verse 2 is, is verse 1.

We are supposed to live sacrificially (worship).

How? Verse 2. If you can’t verse 1, you will never verse 2.

If you can’t verse 2 you’ll never be able to figure out this will.

Stage 1: The Renewed mind and The BibleGod explains as much of his will as we will know in the BibleNot in a Crystal ball, not in tarot cards, not in seance— only in the BibleSince he hasn’t given us ways to make little decisions that means that he doesn’t want us to know exactly what will happen. He could have given us a magic 8-ball but, he didn’t. But, the Bible without the renewed mind won’t be of much help. People use the Bible all sorts of wrong ways because their minds have not been renewed by the Holy SpiritThe Bible will be used to equip us for “every good work”. Not just some of the good works. But ALL of them. That means if God’s will is for us to do good works, then we need to be saturated in the word with a renewed mind.Stage 2: The Renewed Mind and the Bible and DecisionsYou won’t have a crystal ball, but you have good works. Ok, but now you still need to make decisions. How is that going to happen?What will happen naturally is that as you seek an answer your renewed mind will be moved by what it has seen in Scripture and has felt through growth in the Holy Spirit and it will begin to feel out the path that is most like the mind of Christ.The “Spirit of the mind” begins to act like the Holy Spirit as it is shaped and grown and the Holy Spirit.This is very different than hearing voices or waiting for lightning to strike.The more you know who God is, the more you will know what pleases him and what he hates. The more you know God the more you will know how to act and what to decide. Compare: laboring in study, prayer, wisdom seeking for a renewed mind to apply God’s word to your life and asking God for a direct revelation. Stage 3: The Renewed Life and everything elseI think you would be surprised at how much of your life decisions are about:maybe .01% is big life decisionsmaybe 4.9% is regular other decisionsleaving close to 95% of your life to happen without decisionsHundreds and hundreds of acts a day that you don’t even considerAlmost all of your attitudesalmost all of your facial expressions and body positioningThis means that almost everything you do— another way to phrase that is, almost all of your opportunities to follow the will of command of God you do or don’t do without thinking. They spill out. They just happen. They are just there. They are who you are naturally. what you believe naturally. what happens by itself.Jesus in Matt 12:34-36 For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. 35 A good person produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil person produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. 36 I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speakSo, don’t be angry, don’t be upset, don’t be jealous, don’t be anxious. Those are commands we break and we don’t even think about them. The Renewed mind is a change. It is new. It is the work of God in us. It is a huge, different change. In order for the spill over to be good it has to be a good tree. you can’t make it good. Only God can renew your mind. Only God can make you new.

Let’s put this into real life. You need to make a big decision in the next 30 days.

God has given you everything you need to know to make the right decision.

This is an easy truth: you need to read your Bible. This is a harder truth: you need to believe that giving yourself to the written word of God is one of the most foundational and important things you can do.Saturate yourself with the word. Know what it says about how to live a life that is pleasing and holy to God. Strive to live that life. The Holy Spirit will renew your mind in that. And then test; examine; interpret; approve- prove it by testing it. You can’t pray over every single decision so you know things need to be ingrained into you. You need to have a new nature. You will learnBy trusting in the Sovereign will of God and walking in the Command will of God I will experience the will that he has for my life.

Relationship 1: The Renewed mind and The Bible

God explains as much of his will as we will know in the Bible

This is an easy truth: you need to read your Bible. This is a harder truth: you need to believe that giving yourself to the written word of God is one of the most foundational and important things you can do.Saturate yourself with the word. Know what it says about how to live a life that is pleasing and holy to God. Strive to live that life. The Holy Spirit will renew your mind in that. And then test; examine; interpret; approve- prove it by testing it. You can’t pray over every single decision so you know things need to be ingrained into you. You need to have a new nature. You will learnBy trusting in the Sovereign will of God and walking in the Command will of God I will experience the will that he has for my life.

Not in a Crystal ball, not in tarot cards, not in seance— only in the Bible

Since he hasn’t given us ways to make little decisions that means that he doesn’t want us to know exactly what will happen.

He could text us in the morning, but he doesn’t.

But, the Bible without the renewed mind won’t be of much help. People use the Bible all sorts of wrong ways because their minds have not been renewed by the Holy Spirit

The Bible will be used to equip us for “every good work”. Not just some of the good works. But ALL of them.

(- And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.)

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

That means if God’s will is for us to do good works, then we need to be saturated in the word with a renewed mind.

So step one is making sure that you have the Bible and you have a renewed mind- in other words, make sure that you are a Christian and that you believe the Bible is the true, authoritative word of God— no one else’s opinion matters.

Relationship 2: The Renewed Mind and the Bible and Decisions

You won’t have a crystal ball, but you have good works. Ok, but now you still need to make decisions. How is that going to happen?

What will happen naturally is that as you seek an answer your renewed mind will be moved by what it has seen in Scripture and has felt through growth in the Holy Spirit and it will begin to feel out the path that is most like the mind of Christ.

The “Spirit of the mind” begins to act like the Holy Spirit as it is shaped and grown and the Holy Spirit.--- You are a different person now.

This is very different than hearing voices or waiting for lightning to strike.

The more you know who God is, the more you will know what pleases him and what he hates.

The more you know God the more you will know how to act and what to decide.

Compare: laboring in study, prayer, wisdom seeking for a renewed mind to apply God’s word to your life and asking God for a direct revelation.

(we ignore God up until we need to make a decision)

So, step 2 is where we see the renewed mind pushed by the truth of the Bible into making you live a new way. Now, your life is beginning to be transformed. As decisions come up you can more easily see how decisions will affect your true worship of God.

This is where most people struggle. This is college. This is who will I marry. this is the big decisions. How do I know if I am going to choose the wrong one?

Well, have you been living in the wrong one your whole life? Is the wrong one what guides your thoughts and motives and dreams? are you conformed to the wrong one? Have you been transformed to the right one?

There are so many Commands of the will of god that we ignore when we are looking for the Sovereign will of God.

Relationship 3: The Renewed Life and everything else

I think you would be surprised at how much of your life you actually decide:

maybe .01% is big life decisions

maybe 4.9% is regular other decisions

leaving close to 95% of your life to happen without decisions

Hundreds and hundreds of acts a day that you don’t even consider

Almost all of your attitudes

almost all of your facial expressions and body positioning

This means that almost everything you do— another way to phrase that is, almost all of your opportunities to follow the will of command of God you do or don’t do without thinking.

(Let me rephrase: 95% of the time you have a chance to obey God or do his will, you don’t even think about it)

They spill out. They just happen. They are just there. They are who you are naturally. What you believe naturally. What happens by itself.

Jesus in For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. 35 A good person produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil person produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. 36 I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak

So, don’t be angry, don’t be upset, don’t be jealous, don’t be anxious. Those are commands we break and we don’t even think about them.

The Renewed mind is a change. It is new. It is the work of God in us. It is a huge, different change.

In order for the spill over to be good it has to be a good tree. You can’t make it good. Only God can renew your mind. Only God can make you new.

So, we are sitting here trying to make sense of our lives. We have decisions to make, we have decisions that we make without thinking.

God says to do this right we rely on the Bible, and the Holy Spirit.

We are already transformed, but now we are told to act like it.

Don’t act like what you are surrounded by. Act like what you really are.

Transformation (Metamorphoo) is the same word that we get metamorphosis— changing into a beautiful butterfly.

Paul is writing and saying: you are a butterfly, come out of the cocoon of the world. Don’t be shaped like that any more!

Be transformed- shows us that we really are already conformed to the world. We are not neutral. Our hearts desire evil. He says DO NOT desire that but actually, DO be transformed. We are already transformed in Christ. We have a new identity. So, now we act like what we are. We live like who we are.

God opens our eyes. Then exposure to the light of God in our life gives us perspective. We can begin to see what doesn’t work. We can begin to see ugliness that we thought was beauty. We can begin to see beauty that we had completely overlooked--- because our eyes had been shut but he opened them (salvation/transformation) and now when his light is shed into our life we can see clearly (renewal/transformation).

“I wish I could just know what to do?” — that is asking to see clearly.

Can you imagine living life with all light strobbing?

Tasks— many impossible, most slowed, all frustrating

Grow— Bible, sermon, prayer, journeling, experience

Just like a plant, you might stay alive, but you’ll be blind. Blind with no fruit.

As we are faithful to him and his teaching, the light will stay on. It will transform us. we will be different now. We will live a life as who we really are. We will know the will of God.

And if you live that will out you will find that it is what is good, pleasing, and perfect. You will find that you are living life sacrificially and holy.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind- The transformation is not passive. It happens to us, but there is a process by which transformation comes about. Here Paul lets us know that it is by the renewal of our minds from one place to another that we see change. The spirit of our mind undergoes change and that change then works outward into all the farther reaches and we are transformed from the inside out. The creation that moves forward will controlled by a new captain and thus the choices will be different, the perspectives will be different. The face, body, and habits may look the same. But the more that renewal takes place, the more difference will be seen.

How then is a renewal taking place? what exactly happens to get us transformed? through knowledge God changes our affections. Things we liked before we realize our bad. Things we thought were good are realized to be evil.

says we are “being renewed in the knowledge in the image of its Creator” and this takes place as “we are being renewed day by day” (). Who is the image of God? Jesus. Who is the Creator? God the Father. Who is working with us changing us every day we allow him to? The Holy Spirit. There is a trinitarian work that renews us every day, the more we know Him.

All of this is opposed to the age of Satan. You can’t be renewed by that knowledge or energy.

God opens our eyes. Then exposure to the light of God in our life gives us perspective. We can begin to see what doesn’t work. We can begin to see ugliness that we thought was beauty. We can begin to see beauty that we had completely overlooked--- because our eyes had been shut but he opened them (salvation/transformation) and now when his light is shed into our life we can see clearly (renewal/transformation).

Can you imagine living life with all light strobing?

Imagine trying to drive, watch a movie, take a picture, read a book. It is impossible to really make it anywhere in life if the lights never stay on. That is how we treat our Christianity.

We want to transform and build things and so we flip the lights on real quick cause we read for a bit and that teaches us. But, we don’t make a commitment to reading so soon we forget and the lights go back off.

We listen to some sermon or teaching. But we call that enough teaching and never pray about it, talk to others about what it means, we might not even change anything in our lives because of it. The lights go back off.

You know if your were to flick the lights on and off for a cucumber plat it wouldn’t really produce any fruit and it would only work half as much as it should. It would be half-alive and half dead.

Cont.- the renewal of our mind is what trans forms us. The light of God working in our hearts and minds is what renews our minds.

Are you flickering the lights on and off? Just enough light to stay alive? Not enough to really change. Not enough to renew. Not enough to be different. Not enough to give fruit. Just enough to be there. half dead.

So that you may discern— The whole purpose of this path is that we reach an end where we know what the will of God is. His will is what is good, perfect and pleasing. The will of God (command will) is right here in front of it. So, can we discern it, test it, trail it, prove it by test? He is saying that we should be transformed and renewed in our minds and that will allow us to live a life that is sacrificial and holy for God. Once we are doing that we will be able to discern what we should be doing in life because we will be walking by the light. Not strobing, tripping over stuff. We can see what is clear and in front of us by the light of God and make our decisions clearly. We can test what we should do because we will know what is right and true by how we have ben living our lives.

The renewal takes place as the transformation pulls the butterfly out of the cocoon of the world’s conformity. It pulls the butterfly out as you test what you know the Bible teaches to be true.

Notes

Do not be conformed- This life of true worship comes about through two ways. The first is through the negative command: DO NOT be conformed to the ways of this world. The negative imperative is continuous. It is not a one time choice, but rather this command is the will of God for your entire life. God’s will for your life is that you life in a way of worship that doesn’t conform with the world. A few questions are there: 1. what is “the world”? 2. How do I remain unconformed to it? 3. What do I do instead? These are mostly answered in the second command.

“the World”- this age. the darkness. Satan is the god of this evil age (, , ) If Satan is control (and he is) then we need to avoid the push to align ourselves with the world- morally, philosophically, intellectually, politically, emotionally, and ultimately behaviorally.

But- this one word shows us the path. Naturally we are want to conform. That is our born nature, our regular, unadulterated desire- we want to be like the world. “But” there is hope. There was a defensive approach, now here is the offensive play.

Be transformed- This is the positive command now. while there was a DO NOT there is also a DO. Do be transformed. Transformed shows us that we really are already conformed to the world. We are not neutral. Our hearts desire evil. He says DO NOT desire that but actually, DO be transformed. We are already transformed in Christ. We have a new identity. So, now we act like what we are. We live like who we are. We engage the transformation that God has laid out for us. This command is big and we don’t know exactly where to begin with it. He goes on/.

Transformation (Metamorphoo) is the same word that we get metamorphosis— changing into a beautiful butterfly.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind- The transformation is not passive. It happens to us, but there is a process by which transformation comes about. Here Paul lets us know that it is by the renewal of our minds from one place to another that we see change. The spirit of our mind undergoes change and that change then works outward into all the farther reaches and we are transformed from the inside out. The creation that moves forward will controlled by a new captain and thus the choices will be different, the perspectives will be different. The face, body, and habits may look the same. But the more that renewal takes place, the more difference will be seen.

How then is a renewal taking place? what exactly happens to get us transformed? through knowledge God changes our affections. Things we liked before we realize our bad. Things we thought were good are realized to be evil.

says we are “being renewed in the knowledge in the image of its Creator” and this takes place as “we are being renewed day by day” (). Who is the image of God? Jesus. Who is the Creator? God the Father. Who is working with us changing us every day we allow him to? The Holy Spirit. There is a trinitarian work that renews us every day, the more we know Him.

All of this is opposed to the age of Satan. You can’t be renewed by that knowledge or engergy.